•This should have come a long time ago
BARELY a month after slipping into recession, the rally to save the economy has, understandably, taken on a frenzy note. At a ministerial retreat with the theme “Building Inter-ministerial Synergy for Effective Planning and Budgeting in Nigeria” held in Abuja on September 16, President Muhammadu Buhari reportedly told his ministers to think “out-of-the-box, to deploy strategies that involve engaging meaningfully with the private sector, to raise the level of private sector investment in the economy as a whole”.
The problem with the charge by the President is that it is coming rather late. Had the statement been made in November 2015 when he swore in the ministers, it would have been taken as one of those rites of passage for an incoming team; a marching order of sorts to set the tone for the administration. However, coming 10 months after inauguration of the cabinet, and with a recession in our hands to boot, it comes across as a validation of the growing charge about the absence of coherence in policy, the lack of synergy among the operatives of the Federal Government, if not entirely an alibi for the palpable inertia that has defined the Buhari administration.
We agree broadly with the President on the need for a new approach to “rid the country of its oil dependence and to diversify the economy and bring the country out of the current economic recession”.
Our disagreement is with the idea that the problems are any ‘new’ or that they require rocket science in any sense to solve. Moreover, if we had thought that the administration had long recognised the need to bring the private sector on board in its mission to save the economy, the presidential statement would seem to suggest how wrong we are.
Yet again, it appears that the point about the problems not being new has not been sufficiently made. For instance, only last week, Vice-President Yemi Osinbajo hosted the maiden meeting of the Presidential Quarterly Business Forum with members of the Organised Private Sector and other stakeholders. At the end, the meeting identified 13 factors inhibiting business growth and development in the country.
On examination, the issues come to the same old issues that have not only plagued our businesses, but have rendered indigenous entrepreneurship such a nightmare. These are access to finance, foreign exchange, high interest rates and high energy cost. Others are transport and infrastructural deficit, weak export support, inconsistent government policies, and absence of clear investment policies. Other challenges are said to include approval delays, low support for domestic manufacturing, customs delay and security issues.
None of these factors, as far as we can see, requires any new ‘visioning’ to identify any more than the presidential wild goose chase for far-flung solutions would require. In other words, the very idea that operatives of the administration are still searching for solutions to the problems16 months into its 48-month tenure, and this in a nation said to possess abundant competences and talents, would seem a huge joke. Indeed, an administration that came with a resolve to do things differently, particularly one that has an emergency on its hands, ought to have moved beyond cant to address the problems in a rather decisive manner.
Agreed, there may be very little that the administration can do – in the short term – to boost domestic revenue and foreign exchange given the continuing volatility in oil prices and the restiveness in the Niger Delta. Unfortunately, the evidence that the Federal Government is making headway in tackling the problems in a fundamental sense would appear sparse. Little wonder the continuing impression of a Federal Government not only overwhelmed, but one out of touch with the enormity of the problems.
At the moment, what is required of the Federal Government is to move gingerly to address the problems. That is the only way to demonstrate that it has firm understanding of the current challenges.